


Who You Were Then/Who You Are Now

by th_esaurus



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Consent Issues, Homophobic Language, M/M, Timeline Fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:57:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let us take what James Barnes remembers as fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who You Were Then/Who You Are Now

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a throwaway comment from Destronomics, and Quigonejinn's entire back catalogue.
> 
> For Lizzen, because I owed her the dicks that weren't in my last Bucky fic.

Human memory is unreliable at best. 

Though he has not been classed as common humanity for almost a lifetime.

*

Let us take what James Barnes remembers as fact.

*

They were nineteen at most. Bucky was a year younger, the history books all confirmed it, though Steve was as slight and skinny as a boy freshly spat out of puberty. A wimp. A futz. A fruit. There’s no real context for the slurs, but they shadowed him nonetheless. Bucky could cover Steve’s little silhouette entirely with his own, so that made it easier to get by.

They were young men without proving grounds and a tenacity that their unstable roots could not nurture. 

The apartment they shared—

*

“Tell me about Brookyln,” Bucky frowns.

“That’s pretty wide,” Steve says conversationally, from the kitchen. He’s making coffee, French press, but he glances up noticeably at Bucky’s question. Always trying to interpret. Always feigning he’s not.

“We lived together?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Steve murmurs, pouring two mugs. “You could’ve stayed with your folks but after my Ma died, you—we had a sofa we took from the landfill. Hosed it down and left it out to dry for three days. It was always bulky and outta shape after that. You slept on that. Made me take the bed because the sofa picked up dust easy. Aggravated my lungs.”

“You were ill,” Bucky states. “What colour were the walls?”

“Dreary. Like everything else. Cream, I guess, you could call it.”

“I guess,” Bucky murmurs. Steve hands him coffee. The smell is familiar but the taste less so. Freshly ground coffee. 

*

\--had been cream, dreary, brownish. The sofa was long bent out of shape, always faintly smelling of wet dog or worse. Bucky slept with a towel over his face on hotter nights to stave it off. He called dibs on the trickling shower every morning, but showered cold to save whatever hot water might be hiding in the pipes for Steve. Brylcreem in his hair, a comb that they shared. No mirror. Steve gave him a thumbs up most mornings. 

“You rushed it,” he’d sometimes tut. Licked his thumb and forefinger and slicked back an errant bang.

Bucky double-dipped. Lugging crates at Brooklyn Wharf from sunrise until five-ish, and then he worked in the kitchens of a dinner owned by a loose family connection on Tuesdays through Fridays. A dishwasher. His hands were nearly always chaffed or bruised or wrinkled. Girls complained and admired in equal amounts. Girls—

*

“I was a ladies man,” Bucky says abruptly. They have been dismantling and assembling rifles. Bucky is faster, by several seconds. 

Steve laughs and Bucky can read seven distinct emotions in the sound. Catalogues them. “You were gonna get round to that one eventually.”

“Did it bother you?”

“Why would it?” Steve says mildly. He is lying. Men lie almost constantly, even Steve Rogers.

Bucky resets the timer and says, “Again. Keep up with me.”

*

\--would come over and coo at his poor hands, and Bucky would say, “You want baby soft skin, you oughtta get Steve’s palms on you. Leave you marked up with graphite but by Christ they’re smooth.”

They rolled their pretty eyes.

His fingers often smelled of cunt and Steve would wrinkle his nose at it. Disdain, but also curious. He knew the sometimes fruitish scent of a dame’s hair on a night out, but no more. No lower. Still took girls out for milkshakes at nineteen when he should’ve been aiming for dirty drinks and espressos.

 

Bucky bought coffee for them both at—

*

\--he associated the smell with Alexander Pierce’s darkly lit kitchen, the man ground his coffee fresh and took an ill-advised cup every evening, and the scent always lingered on his fingers as Pierce tangled them in his hair--

*

\--a little dive called Bianchi, pointed out patrons for Steve to sketch, mainly fellas with faces like gangsters or character actors. Made up little stories about them. What their wives were like, how good they were at their job, how they took their drink. Made Steve snort into his chipped mug sometimes when he’d put on high voices of the harassed lovers he invented for fattened up businessmen with bad combovers. 

“I ever get like that, you gotta put me outta my misery,” Bucky would say, not even trying to be quiet.

“Yeah sure,” Steve scoffed. “Let me know when your paycheck’s get enough zeroes to eat like that.”

Bucky slung his arm around Steve on the walk home. Stuck out his chest to overcompensate for Steve’s concave bones and baggy slacks. Bucky’s rolled up sleeves meant his bare forearm, strong and tanned from the docks, leant against the skin of Steve’s nape. A little sweat formed in the pocket of Bucky’s elbow, but he didn’t move. Comfortable enough there.

At night—

*

Bucky follows Steve into his bedroom.

“Hey, pal,” Steve says, gentle and questioning. 

Bucky has his own guest room, and has used it without complaint for the past two months. His toothbrush is in the ensuite. Brylcreem too. Though his hair is still long—

*

\--fingers through his hair, pulled a little too hard, his neck bared and he thought about knives, suffocation, nooses, all potentials, but the grip lessened and a voice murmured that he was good, it was good that he suppressed his panic, it was good and they would keep practicing this way, fingers in the hair, through his long hair, head tipped back—

 

*

\--so he doesn’t have cause to use it. Steve bought it for nostalgic value. A familiar brand that might jog unfamiliar memories. Nonetheless. 

Bucky follows Steve into his bedroom and knits his brow together and says, “We did, though, right? You mentioned the sofa, but—“

“Well sure, I mean—“ Steve rubs the back of his neck. “It got cold in winter. We were poor, no point in hiding it. You were always warmer than me.”

“You were very thin,” Bucky agrees. “I’d like to compare.”

Steve blinks at the formality of the request. His mouth moves in uncertain ways, and Bucky categorises them all, labels them, files them. The final expression is something akin to determination, and he shucks off his t-shirt. 

*

\--they clambered into the same bed, a small double, Bucky nude and Steve in his underwear and a threadbare wifebeater. Steve’s angles were not well made for embraces, but Bucky did his damnedest. Not so much spooning, but it felt good to tangle his legs up in Steve’s, get his bent knee up between Steve’s thighs, lean up on one elbow and look down at Steve’s stuck out bones and thin smile. 

Bucky’s fingers rarely smelled of cunt these days. 

They were raw from the crates at the dock and sometimes he had splinters. Steve put Bucky’s forefinger in his mouth and felt one out with his tongue, squeezed the fingertip and eased the woodchip out between his teeth. 

“Fuck me,” Bucky exhaled. 

“What would your mother say,” Steve scoffed, flushed as—

*

\--in his hair, hard, and the smell of fresh coffee, and a friendly voice that said, “I imagine this isn’t new to you, is it now?”, and a heavy breach between the Winter Soldier’s lips—

*

\--he ever was when Bucky made moves on him. He never could quite believe it. That Bucky used his lines less and less on the dames and more and more on Steve. A fruit, they called him. A futz. 

Well, his hands were steady enough.

Bucky—

*

“Buck,” Steve sighs, his back pushed up against the kitchen counter. His breath is warm on Bucky’s lips. 

“This isn’t new, right? This isn’t new, is it?” 

There’s half a sliced grapefruit by the sink, the beginnings of breakfast, and Steve is still in his loose jogging pants. “What?” he says, trying to frown.

“C’mon,” is all Bucky will reply. His metal left hand is very steady, but the right is giving it a run for its money. No one could accuse him of lack of confidence, even if sometimes he can’t remember his own surname. “C’mon.” 

He gets his lips back against Steve’s. He has to tilt his head up just slightly.

*

\--made a hot circle of his left fist and pushed Steve’s underwear down with his right, saying, “Thrust up in it, that’s, that’ll be better than just lyin’ there,” and Steve replied that Bucky just wanted him to do all the work and Bucky put his crooked elbow in Steve’s mouth until he coughed and spat and laughed and got on with it, his erect prick pushing up into the tight grip of Bucky’s palm. 

They quietened down while that all went on. Steve put his hands on Bucky’s strong shoulders, and bought his knees up for better purchase against the bed. Made little groans like he sometimes did when he stretched too far. Bucky liked the way the head of Steve’s prick dragged all the way up inside his palm and all the way back down again. He was hard. Mightily so. Steve’s little groans like he was pained. Staining Bucky’s shoulders with his graphite hands. 

“Ease it, ease it, Steve, lemme just—“

*

\--isn’t new to you, is it now?” Pierce said first time his cock breached the Winter Soldier’s open mouth; and had the Winter Soldier been a man who had the capacity to wonder, he’d have wondered what was meant by it. 

*

\--C’mon,” Bucky says, on his knees. Grapefruit on the counter. Steve’s jogging pants around his ankles. “We did it all the time.”

*

\--just, here, stop for a goddamn second,” and Bucky loosened his grip, pulled his hand away, pressed his open mouth against Steve’s sweating temple and then went back down, shoved Steve’s legs up roughly around his shoulders and over his back, and got Steve’s prick in his mouth. The both of them went still. Too, too still, until Steve couldn’t help shuddering. Bucky let him get used to the damp heat of it first. Pressed his tongue against the underside of Steve’s cock, not really licking, just exposing him to the sensation. Steve made low noises. His voice always was low for such a small body. Good sized dick, too. Surprisingly so. Felt full in Bucky’s fast mouth.

“This isn’t new to you, huh?” Steve managed, breathing too hard. 

*

Pierce’s cock breached the Winter Soldier’s open mouth, and he murmured things while he fucked in about a man the Winter Soldier did not know. Rogers. That was the name. He didn’t recognize it. He was busy besides. 

“It’s pure speculation, of course,” Pierce said, a little haltingly. “You have a cocksucker’s mouth.”

*

Steve came, and Bucky--

*

\--Steve comes, and Bucky swallows it. Breathes out. Registers that Steve’s hand never once grabbed at his hair, neither hard nor gentle. He’d gripped the edge of the counter the whole time.

“It’s not like this is new,” Bucky says, wiping his mouth on the back of his real hand.

“Yes it is,” Steve snaps, pulling up his pants. “Jesus Christ, Bucky. Of course it is.”

*

Let us take what James Barnes remembers as fact, and not as a deeply planted seed, long-ago rooted by the smell of fresh coffee and a hand in his hair and a cock in his mouth. 

*

“Human memory,” Pierce had told him kindly. “An unreliable source. Pure speculation, of course. You and Rogers.”


End file.
